Denny’s Beach

Friday June 28, 2013

After the fireworks show last night, we all made our way to bed at the incredibly late hour of ten o’clock. I don’t think everyone else on board was aware of mine and Matt’s ‘don’t roll out of bed before 9’ rule, and when the whole boat was bustling with people at 6:30 am, we couldn’t stay in bed any longer. Trudging up the stairs in our pajamas, we were greeted with a gorgeous view outside of early morning haze and clouds rolling off the mountains. It was postcard perfect, and we all sat on the transom, sipping hot coffee and taking it in. It was while we were figuring out what we wanted to do with our day that we found out one very important thing about our captain, Luis. He is an amazing cook. While figuring out what we wanted to do for breakfast he kind of looked around and said he didn’t have much on the boat, but he’d see what he could whip up. 15 minutes later, we were all treated to a spread of breakfast tostadas, where he’d crisped up some tortillas, spread on a black bean paste, and then topped it with scrambled eggs, fresh salsa, and cilantro.  The funny part was, when he kept apologizing that he had nothing aboard and this was all he could make us, and Matt and I kept thinking to ourselves, ‘Wow, this is one of the best meals we’ve ever had!’.

It didn’t take long for the sun to come out from behind the mountains and clouds, and it got hot fast.  We were quickly switching from coffee to cold sodas, still sitting on the transom trying to make plans for the day.  All the boaters in the regatta were preparing to go their separate ways and with some taking the river further inland to attend a rodeo in another town, others were stopping at a little beach resort place called Denny Beach, about half way between El Estor and Fronteras, and some of the others were headed straight back.  We had no reason to be back to the boat right away, and it was still early in the morning, so the two of us put our vote in to go to Denny’s Beach.  Cleaning up our breakfast and getting changed out of my pj’s, that’s when I came in to a conversation, or maybe just realized what the earlier conversation had been, that a trip to Denny’s Beach was not just a few hour stop over.  It was to be another overnight trip.  Hmmmm, what had we just agreed to?  Our only worry was Georgie, we had only planned on leaving her for two days, but another day out with friends sounded really nice too.  We agreed to this extra night on the condition that we’d up anchor first thing the next morning to get back to the marina.

Luis and Luki enjoying a morning coffee.

  Speaking of upping anchor, that became a bit of an issue of us this morning as we tried to make our way out of El Estor.  Turns out we had anchored right on top of a fishing net, and had to spend the next 30 minutes slowly bringing up the line as we tried to cut the net off of it.  It was obvious it wasn’t an in-use net, otherwise we would have felt terrible about destroying someone’s livelihood.  The stench of this net though, after sitting at the bottom of the lake for I don’t even know how long, I think we could have all done without.

  The ride to Denny’s Beach was about two hours, where I napped through most of it, not having felt 100% that morning.  The resort’s lancha came to pick us up and brought us to a shore which was a very relaxed atmosphere, in the middle of a jungle of trees and no indication of a town anywhere.  We stepped from the dock onto the sandy beach in the midst of of swarm of yellow butterflies, and made our way over to a few picnic tables covered with shade.  Joining two other cruising couples from our marina that had also made the journey up to the regatta, we all got to know each other over a cold beer and lunch.  Having been cooped up on a boat for almost a full day now though, Matt and I along with Luki and Elmarie wanted to try out the hiking trails that ran up the hill behind us.  We set off with what sounded like good directions, but immediately got lost.  What should have been a ‘well marked path’ looked like nothing more than some possible previous footsteps on the ground.  It was 20 minutes of “Let’s just see what’s up around this bend” before we stumbled upon a gazebo high up on the hill with views out to the lake.  Looks like we had been taking the correct ‘path’ all along.

 Joining everyone back at the picnic table, we caught a lancha back to Hydromax just in time to catch a rain storm that was coming through.  Luckily it was very quick and left and end to end rainbow right in front of us, which completely made up for the fact that basically my only pair of clothes were now soaking wet.  I was completely prepared to change into my pajamas at five o’clock in the afternoon, but then we all decided another swim was in order.  Or was it a bath?  Either way, we were all in our suits and in the water within five minutes of getting back to the boat.  Diving in and out of hot and cold pockets of water, we kept an eye out for those illusive alligators and enjoyed a cloudy and hazy sunset with some wine and beer.  Time to head back to reality and boat projects tomorrow.